The 2014 World Cup draw and bracket is now set after the announcement on Friday and now all the group matchups and games for the opening fixtures are ready to go and the Brazil tournament has some amazing first matchups, including Italy playing against England, the United States taking on Ghana, Germany and Portugal as well as Spain playing against the Netherlands.
The draws were announced live from Brazil on Friday and there are a number of groups that will be tough, including Group D and Group G and that will put the United States on a tough track. Mexico opens their group play against Cameroon and they will have a tough go of it as well in their group. The United States now has the longest travel schedule of any teams in the tournament and the fact that they play in a tough group makes their group stage matchups very tough and they will be going up against Portugal in the toughest match when they have to travel nearly 4,000 miles to play in the Amazon stadium.
The US team has dealt with tough draws in the past, but nothing like Ghana, Germany and Portugal and now it will be very difficult for the team to get into the knockout stages, even with them having a great 2013 and showing that they are a solid nation to play against. The team will have a crazy travel schedule and then they will also have a tough match against Germany to end group play and that could make things very tough on the US national team when they play Ronaldo and Portugal before that. Ghana is also the team that has defeated the US in the past two World Cups and they play against the nation to open group play and that will be a very difficult match for the US.
Spain comes in as the World Cup champions from 2010 and they will open up against the Netherlands in a rematch while Brazil will start off against Croatia and they got a favorable group as the host nation and they are the only team to participate in all 20 World Cups and now they have a chance to get to the knockout stages, as their group as Mexico, Croatia and Cameroon and the Mexican national team is only in after the Us helped them get into the playoffs.
The Group D set has some tough matches as well and may consider that one the group of death and England will open things up against the Italian team and Italy looks to be a spoiler in that group, which has Uruguay, Italy, Costa Rica and England and could be one of the toughest. Group F has some solid teams in Argentina, but with Nigeria, Iran and Bosnia-Herzegovina also there, it should be too difficult for them to advance.
The United States and Ghana will open up their Group G play at Estadio das Dunas at 6 pm ET on June 16 and the tournament will run from June into July and on the other side, Germany and Portugal will start off at Arena Fonte Nova on the same day. Colombia and Greece open against each other, while France will try and start off with a win against Honduras and some of the other tough matches includes Uruguay and Costa Rica.